The present invention relates to a display controlling apparatus, a display controlling method, and a recording medium for displaying at least icons onto a screen.
Today, personal computers and home appliances handling digital data have gained widespread acceptance. The popularization of such digital equipment is making it easy for the general public to record TV broadcasts onto hard disks or other media and to store user-captured still or moving pictures into memory cards or other suitable storage devices.
The still pictures and other forms of content thus recorded can be quite numerous. The stored items of content may then be searched for and retrieved using corresponding thumbnail icons. These tasks are performed illustratively by information processing apparatuses such as one disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-74322. The disclosed apparatus displays a list of thumbnail icons representative of content items in spiral fashion on a time series basis.
With these information processing apparatuses, however, the content items corresponding to the displayed thumbnail icons are not structured in layers. That means all thumbnail icons are subject to search. If there are a large number of thumbnail icons being displayed, it could take inordinately long to check one icon at a time in search for desired content items. This can be a frustratingly inefficient exercise.